We Are The Generation That Doesn’t Want Relationships

Our generation always wants more - and we want someone to share it with. We want another artsy coffee mug for our Sunday morning Instagram, we want another pair of footsteps for our evening walk on the beach. We are the generation that does not want a relationship.

We want our relationship to be at the top of social media #relationshipgoals and a romance one could consider a facebook hit.

We want someone fun to go out for Friday brunch with, someone to give us some positivity on hectic Mondays, a partner for Taco Tuesday, and we also want to wake up to a good morning text on Wednesday. We want someone to join us to all the weddings that keep showing up (how did other people do it? Where did they find their happily ever after???)

But we are the generation that doesn't want a relationship.

We swipe right attempting to find the right one. We read "5 Ways To Know He's Into You" and "7 Ways To Get Her To Fall For You", hoping to upcycle a person into a relationship like a Pinterest project. We take our Tinder profiles more seriously than our personality, yet we don't want a relationship.

tumblr.com

Happily ever after is great, as long as we don't have to change our crazy schedule. We just can't find time for it. Not right here, not right now.

We want to deepen our connection, yet we don't want to pay the price. Like free wifi - we want that full speed love, yet we run away from it when it's too close to really catch us.

We want to hold hands, but we don't want to put our vulnerabilities into another's hands. We like some romance, but it's tricky to measure how much. So we skip it all; Nobody wants to be judged.

We want to keep chasing the idea of love, but we try really hard not to actually fall into it.

We want anything that will give us a pseudo relationship that works like one, but is NOT one. We ask for all the rewards and zero risks. We want all the payout, none of the costs.

We try people out like samples to see how it goes until we figure out it's not a good fit. We want commitment but not to get tied down.

We take it slow. NO labels. We just hang out.

We keep one eye open, one foot out of the door, a second option at hand - playing with people's emotions but moreover, playing with our own feelings.

When things start taking shape we make it blurry again. We hide. We walk away. We take a moment to analyze other possibilities. The world is big - and there's always another nice candidate out there. What if there's a better one? We live with so many chances to find love. And too little chances of keeping it.

Can we swipe right, directly into happiness?

We want to download the perfect fit like an app with guaranteed functionality. If there's a hitch, we expect a quick update, otherwise, we toss it aside.

tumblr.com

We text and share pictures, we sext. We "talk" and grab a coffee and beer together. Anything not to call it a date.

We text to meet up and small talk, and then we go home, where we text some more.

We keep a solid distance by playing games with no winner, like "qho's the most apathetic", "who takes longer to answer", "who seems to cares less" that usually lead us straight back to "Single again".

We want the image of a perfect relationship, but we don't want to put effort into making it real. We prefer the teasing without deep conversations. More holding hands, less eye contact. We want to jump straight to celebrating anniversaries, and honestly, we aren't really interested in investing before that.

There's always a good Instagram filter for that. If the conversation is getting too real, Netflix can take you out of that.

We believe we are entitled to a real love as well as a full-time job after college. Some call us the entitled generation, and honestly, we start to understand why.

tumblr.com

We've collected all-kids-can-achieve medals and honors that say we deserve it. As we grew up watching Disney VHSs of happily-ever-after for everybody, we know what love is. When is life going to introduce us to our prince charming? Or what is the zip code of our own personalized princess? Where is that amazing person we are destined to spend our happily-ever-after with? We came all the way here, when is the always-promised soul mate arriving?

We want warm hugs, not soul ties. We want to fill up the seat next to us on the sofa, as long we don't have to change the show we're binging on HBO.

We want someone by our side, as long as they don't interfere with our lives.

We want a placeholder, not a person. We want a warm body, not a partner. We want someone to sit on the couch next to us, as we aimlessly scroll through another newsfeed, open another app to distract us from our lives.

We want to walk this middle line: pretending we don't have emotions while wearing our heart on our sleeve, wanting to be needed by someone yet not wanting to need someone. We play hard to get just to test if someone will play hard enough – we don't even fully understand it ourselves.

We sit around with friends discussing the rules, but no one even knows the game we're trying to play.

The problem with our generation not wanting a relationship is that, at the end of the day, we actually do.